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Friday, September 20, 2013

Glimpses of Art

I admit most of the time it doesn't even dawn on me to photograph Cecilia doing math problems or Felicity writing spelling words. But I do sometimes remember to photograph some of their art projects.

Our first week, we used foam sheets to make tiger masks. The book is all anal even to what color should be used. I let them pick whatever colors they wanted. The book has some great ideas, but sometimes it needs to lighten up.

During our last blast of heat, I pulled out some outside paints and let the girls go to town. Teresa did a number. Her arms were black up to her elbows. Same for her shirt and pants. The table looked amazingly colorful though!

We also had a play-doh day outside. They loved that as well.

For music we listened to Haydn's Farewell Symphony and read Celenza's book about how the symphony came about. The girls loved it. Cecilia drew these pages about the story. I love all the gold notes!

Another project in our art book was to make mosaics. So I prepped squares of cardboard and many squares of colored foam. Then I made a basic dough and helped the girls roll it onto their boards. Then I let them make their own mosaics.

This one was mine and basically what the book wanted you to do. It is supposed to be the 10 commandments in yellow and then you decorate around with the other colors and mark the roman numerals with a marker.

Felicity, ever my artistic one, wasn't about to follow the book, but she made a lovely mosaic, though she was disappointed I hadn't cut more pink squares.

Elizabeth, being only in pre-kindergarten and really just beginning to learn to read, write and know her numbers, doesn't have to do art with us but she usually wants to, so I made sure I had supplies for her. She made a beautiful rainbow one.

Cecilia absolutely loves roman numerals, so when she saw the book's plan included them, she was eager to do it the way the book suggested.

Another book project was using Crayola Model Magic to make hand prints. Now, I simply could not do this with only 2 girls, so we did it with all 5. I painted Teresa's and Brigid's on the bottom. I was going to let Teresa paint her own but when she opted to paint the paper instead of the mold, I figured I should just do it. The top row, left to right, are Cecilia's, Felicity's and Elizabeth's.

The girls have been making mosaics and masks and foam flowers, painting outside and inside and playing with playdoh. It has been a creative first 6 weeks of school. Added to two playdates in the past two weeks and no wonder Cecilia asks me every morning, "Mom, what special are we going to do today?"

Ack! I'm sorry Melanie. For some rude reason Blogger stuck your comment aside for moderation. I wish they would let me know when they do that.

The girls really enjoyed the Haydn one and the Vivaldi one. We've also read the Bach and Beethoven and they were fun but I think a little harder for the girls to get into. The Beethoven one makes more sense if you know who Napoleon is and why Beethoven admired him so much or why he felt so betrayed by him. The Bach one is good for talking about the variations in the music but when it came to talking about a riddle in the music, I think my kids were lost as to how there could be a riddle in music. They were still fun and I think they will get more out of them in the future, but the Haydn and Vivaldi have been the favorites so far.

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James and Katherine

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Welcome to my tiny nook in the blogosphere. I do try properly swept and up to date though with five young children, there is bound to be a dust bunny here or a stale Cheerio there. I live on the Eastern Coast of the U.S. daily striving to make our homeschool a wonder in learning, our home warm and fruitful, and our journey to Heaven a joyful one.

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